Protopsephurus
This article was based on formal or substantive deficiencies in the quality assurance biology in the section "paleontology" entered for improvement. This is done in order to bring the quality of the biology articles to an acceptable level. Please help improve this article! Articles that are not significantly improved can be deleted if necessary.
Read the more detailed information in the minimum requirements for biology articles .
Reason: Article contradicts the cited sources
| Protopsephurus | ||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Protopsephurus liui in the Hong Kong Science Museum . |
||||||||||||
| Temporal occurrence | ||||||||||||
| Lower Cretaceous | ||||||||||||
| Locations | ||||||||||||
| Systematics | ||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||
| Scientific name | ||||||||||||
| Protopsephurus | ||||||||||||
| Lu , 1994 | ||||||||||||
Protopsephurus is a prehistoric genus of ray fins that is closely related to living sturgeon and paddlefish . The fossils were found in China in deposits of the Barremium or Aptian from the Lower Cretaceous period. The only known species is Protopsephurus liui . The two known specimens were found in the Yixian Formation (义县 组, Yìxiàn zǔ) in Liaoning in the northeast of the People's Republic of China.
features
The fossils of 2 individuals that were found at Yixian show great similarity to today's sturgeon species . In contrast to many other species, which are only known from scattered but numerous fragments, Protopsephurus only discovered two, but almost complete, skeletons.
The fossils are about 1 m long. Since they were juveniles, researchers believe that the species could become even larger than today's sword sturgeon in China. It was the largest freshwater fish of the Cretaceous period.
The rostrum is narrow and sword-shaped. The skin is smooth and scaly. The eyes are stunted. The tail is heterocercial .
size
Protopsephurus is the largest known species of the Polyodontidae . Lu was able to prove in 1994 that the adult specimens could be up to 7 m long.
Paleobiology
Protopsephurus was a Nekto - benthos - carnivores that his food at the bottom of rivers and in brackish waters of estuaries studied, where he is a special gill raker used to zooplankton and phytoplankton to filter out of the water and catch smaller fish. The main food was probably ostracods (seed shrimp) and fish of the genus Lycoptera .
Surname
The scientific name is made up of Latin , Greek terms and a Latinized Chinese name:
- Proto - from Latin "first, first, in advance, originally"
- psephurus from Greek "sprayer" (ψεφουρος) probably due to the spray holes ; Eduard von Martens , the first to describe the genus, gave no explanation of the name.
The additional species " liui " honors the Chinese paleontologist Liu Xianting for his contributions to the knowledge of the fossil representatives of the sturgeon .
Web links
- Entry Protopsephurus liui in the Paleobiology Database
- steinkern.de
- Lance Grande, Fan Jin, Yoshitaka Yabumoto & William E. Bemis: Protopsephurus liui, a well-preserved primitive paddlefish (Acipenseriformes: Polyodontidae) from the Lower Cretaceous of China. In: Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology. 22: 2, 2002: 209-237. doi : 10.1671 / 0272-4634 (2002) 022 [0209: PLAWPP] 2.0.CO; 2
Individual evidence
- ↑ Protopsephurus LIUi . Paleobiology Database. Retrieved June 24, 2011.
- ^ Paddlefish Classes . Paddlefish Bibliography. Retrieved June 24, 2011.
- ^ Vertebrate assemblages of the Jehol Biota in western Liaoning, China Xiaolin Wang, Yuanqing Wang, Fan Jin 1 Xing Xu and Yuan Wang.
- ^ L. Lu: A new paddlefish from the Upper Jurassic of northeast China. In: Vertebrata PalAsiatica , Vol. 32, No. 2, pp. 134-142, 1994. (digitized version )